New Orleans Pride

Women’s Professional Basketball League (1979-1981)

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New Orleans Pride Logo T-Shirt

The Pride were New Orleans first – and to this day still the only – women’s pro hoops team, playing out of the Superdome from 1979 to 1981.

This Pride logo tee is available from our friends at American Retro Apparel in sizes small through XXXL today!

 

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Background

In the spring of 1979, the city of New Orleans lost their NBA franchise to Salt Lake City, Utah when the Jazz pulled up stakes after five seasons.  One man, a 32-year old stockbroker and basketball junkie named Steve Brown, took the news particularly hard.  Five years earlier, Brown entered a Name the Team contest when the NBA expanded to New Orleans and he submitted the winning suggestion of “Jazz”.

Facing a winter without basketball, Brown approached one of his clients, a gynecologist named John Simpson, and proposed purchasing an expansion franchise for New Orleans in the two-year old Women’s Professional Basketball League (WPBL).  Dr. Simpson declined. But his wife & medical office manager Claudette Simpson liked the idea. She persuaded her husband to become the major investor, with Brown as the team’s minority partner/General Manager.  The WPBL awarded the New Orleans Pride expansion franchise to Brown and the Simpsons on May 30th, 1979.

Debut Season

Brown lured former Jazz Head Coach Butch Van Breda Kolff away from the A.D./Head Basketball Coach position at the University of New Orleans to coach the Pride.  It would be the first experience coaching women for the 58-year old, who also served terms as Head Coach of the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, Phoenix Suns and Detroit Pistons.  He joined Larry Costello of the Milwaukee Does as one of two former NBA head men to chase a paycheck in the fledgling WPBL.

The Pride made their home debut at the Louisiana Superdome on November 15, 1979 in front of a crowd of 8,452. At the time it was the largest crowd on record for professional women’s hoops in the United States.   The crowd was drawn partly by the novelty of women’s basketball and partly by an opening night show that featured the New Orleans Symphony, the San Diego Chicken and a National Anthem performance by Doug “The Ragin’ Cajun” Kershaw.

The Pride finished 2nd in the WPBL’s Eastern Division in the winter of 1979-80, good for second place and a spot in the league playoffs.  The Minnesota Fillies eliminated the Pride in the WPBL quarterfinals in March 1980.

Race & Femininity Questions

Brown left the team after the first season. Claudette Simpson took over as the team’s General Manager and the face of the franchise.

According to Karra Porter’s definitive chronicle of the WPBL, Mad Seasons, Simpson and the team came in for some questioning from the New Orleans Times-Picayune during the 1980-81 season over the racial composition of the team. Only four of the Pride’s twelve players were African-American when the 1980-81 season began. Two of those players, Betty Booker and Beverly Crusoe were traded away early in the season. Years later, Brown, Van Breda Kolff and a white former Pride player, Sybil Blalock, told Karra Porter they thought that the paper’s implications were off base.

According to Porter, racial composition of rosters was just one way that some league officials and team investors wrung their hands over the public image of their teams.  Some teams pushed for skimpier uniforms and were perceived to take physical appearance and “femininity” into consideration alongside basketball talent in personnel matters. Sybil Blalock recalled to Porter that Pride players were encouraged – but not required – by ownership to apply makeup before games.

The Pride commissioned marketing artwork during the both the 1979-80 season (below) and 1980-81 campaign (top of post) that portrayed its player as blonde Barbie dolls.

Demise

For their two seasons of existence, the Pride would split their home games between the cavernous Superdome and the more appropriately scaled field house at the University of New Orleans.  The big crowd of curiosity seekers for opening night in November 1979 turned out to be a fluke.  A February 1981 article by The Associated Press estimated that the Pride averaged around 1,100 fans per game at the two venues during their second and final season.

Other WPBL teams were in the same situation. The league went silent following its third and final championship series, played in April 1981. Summer came and went with no announcement about a 1981-82 season.  The last anyone heard from the Pride was in late October 1981. Claudette Simpson told The Associated Press that the league couldn’t return without the largesse of a new major sponsor and that she and her husband were hoping to unload their franchise to new investors.  The league never formally announced a shutdown, but by early 1982, it was clear the WPBL was done for good.

New Orleans Pride Shop

New Orleans Pride Women’s Cut Logo T from Rebound Vintage Hoops

Pride Logo Mug from Rebound Vintage Hoops

In Memoriam

Pride founder/owner Dr. John Simpson died in a car wreck in 1985.

Butch Van Breda Kolff passed away in 2007 at the age of 84.  New York Times sports columnist George Vecsey published his obituary, calling Van Breda Kolff “the best college basketball coach I ever saw”.

Downloads

1980-81 New Orleans Pride Media Bios Packet

Links

Women’s Professional Basketball League Media Guides

Women’s Basketball League Programs

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